nothing ever changes but the weather
by TolkienGirl
Summary: The only mercy in death is that it is supposed to come quickly. (In Romania, Bucky waits.) (NO SLASH. Just good old brotherly friendship between Steve and Bucky.)


**A/N: Title from a Lukas Graham song.**

The only mercy in death is that it is supposed to come quickly.

He dies a thousand times, and kills a thousand more.

It takes a long time.

...

He buys fruit in Romania. Food not shoveled down his throat in record time is a novelty; he sees the dusty sheen of plums and splits the skin with his fingernail, entranced by the way the juice runs down his thumb, too thin to be blood.

...

There is a little girl who sits on the stoop of his building. (His building. Is it his? Is anything his? He clutches the straps of his backpack to be certain).

"Hello," she says, in Romanian. " _Buna_."

" _Buna_ ," he answers. He speaks Romanian and many, many other languages, but none of them belong to him. One day he wakes up and remembers nothing at all of French or Japanese. His mind shifts like sand. If it is an hourglass, he is running out of time.

(Death is supposed to come quickly.)

"You look sad," she says.

His mother used to tell him not to make those sad eyes at her, trying to get something out of her. He was the oldest, the leader, but he could be charming when he wanted to.

He thinks so, anyway. The memories have been coming back in fragments, but fragments aren't reliable. They're like shards of glass, and where they land in him, he bleeds.

"I'm not sad," he tells her, hunches his shoulders and pounds upstairs. He wonders if Steve has found him yet.

Steve will find him, but he does not know if Steve can find Bucky.

He sets the plums on the counter. A flash of memory comes to him, his father driving them out of the city into the countryside of upstate New York. There were apple trees.

He writes it down. Halfway through, another memory fights its way in. This one draws blood, as he did. His hand clenches around the throat of a child, pushing her out of the way.

It was in Chechnya. The child fell with one arm crumpled underneath her. She did not get up.

He did not look back.

He has to write that down, too.

...

He thinks of going to a church. There are beautiful churches here, but he winces under the gleam of stained glass. They are too quiet. They are for the best and worst of men; he is neither.

He sees old women, black-veiled, heading in on Saturday afternoons, going to confession.

He pushes away the thoughts and pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. What would he confess? Where would he begin?

Even his sins are not his own.

...

He waits for Steve. He is seventy years older than the bright-eyed soldier who punched a bully in an alley, who threw his arm around the shoulder of a stick-thin kid with a heart too big for his chest.

He is so much older, but he feels younger, smaller. He sits with his back against the grimy wall, his one arm wrapped around his knees, letting his metal fingers drag on the floor, limp, as though it is not a part of him.

If the memories never come back, he will not know how many he killed. If they all come back, he will know every single one.

He does not know which is worse.

 _You look sad._

 _You look sad._

 _You look sad._

He retches in the grimy bathroom. He is a shell of what he was, and that was never very much to begin with.

When he enlisted, he knew that the war might take his life.

But not like this. Death is supposed to come quickly.

...

 _You're taking all the stupid with you._

 _I knocked out Adolf Hitler over two-hundred times._

Steve's ears turn red when he's embarrassed. Steve's list of ailments was taller than he was, before. Steve can whistle like a songbird.

Those memories, he holds onto. He likes to think that he clenches them in his good hand, keeping them from slipping between his fingers.

 _The little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him._

 _The man on the bridge. I knew him._

 _I'm with you 'til the end of the line._

...

He is, all at once, a war criminal and a war crime. He is half man and half machine, maybe more than half. He's afraid to know how much.

He eats, and he retches. It's hard to swallow. The streets of this city are no louder than the streets of any other city, but everything is too loud when his head is a time bomb.

Steve is coming.

It is all that keeps him from putting a bullet through his brain, some nights.

Still. _You look sad_.

If only that was all.

He hopes Steve has mercy, and comes quickly.


End file.
